


Genetic Quirks

by roseclaw



Category: CSI: Las Vegas, The Sentinel
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-17
Updated: 2009-11-17
Packaged: 2017-10-03 05:25:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseclaw/pseuds/roseclaw





	Genetic Quirks

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |   
[csi](http://autonomyanatomy.livejournal.com/tag/csi), [fic](http://autonomyanatomy.livejournal.com/tag/fic), [greg sanders](http://autonomyanatomy.livejournal.com/tag/greg+sanders), [hodges is love](http://autonomyanatomy.livejournal.com/tag/hodges+is+love), [rating: pg](http://autonomyanatomy.livejournal.com/tag/rating:+pg), [slash](http://autonomyanatomy.livejournal.com/tag/slash)  
  
---|---  
  
_**CSI: Genetic Quirks**_  
**Fandom**: CSI and The Sentinel  
**Pairing**: Hodges/Sanders  
**Rating**: PG (wtf?)  
**Word Count**: 923  
**Spoilers**: Hodges can smell cyanide. Consider yourself spoiled.   
**Warnings**: This fic contains an abnormally quiet Hodges.   
**Author's Note**: Um… no comment.  
**Disclaimer**: CSI is CBS and The Sentinel is SciFi.   
**Disclaimer 2**: I do not condone the use of any conjugation of the verb "to get" in place of any conjugation of the verb "to be."  
**Summary**: Hodges can smell fresh plastic and an old argument.

 

Genetic Quirks

 

The autoclaved pipette tips smell like fresh plastic. David Hodges pipettes precisely three microliters of a ten percent hydrochloric acid solution from its original flask when Judy pages him. He has visitors. Not a visitor, more than one. He never has visitors. He has no friends outside the lab, and his family is… well, he has no family either. It is probably Sanders carrying out some elaborate prank that is intended to be funny but rarely is. If it is Sanders, he can cool his heels at reception or schlep the hundred feet or so to the Trace lab. David isn't budging. He has work to do, Sander's evidence to run through the GCMS. Sanders has two feet and allegedly a brain, he'd make the connection eventually.

On cue, Sanders enters the Trace lab with a lopsided grin on his face and too much hair product in his hair, filling David's nasal cavities and making his eyes sting, but before David could insert something cutting about short attention spans, Sanders says, "Are you going to keep your visitors waiting long? Because with the way one of them was chatting up Judy, you'll be one visitor short and we'll be looking for a new receptionist."

David almost says something revealing but is able to hold his tongue. He doesn't know any lady's men, Stokes notwithstanding.

Sanders tilts his head just so in a way that reminds David of a stroked-out dog. Sanders stares at him with large brown eyes. "If you aren't going to see your visitors, do you have my results yet?"

David rolls his eyes and peels off his latex gloves. The newly exposed inside of the gloves are smooth and reek of anxiety.

"It's running," he says tersely, heading out of the lab towards the reception. He is aware that Sanders follows him. He's also aware of several lab rats watching him through the glass: Andrews, Dawson, and Simms look immensely curious, and he can smell Franco's perfume even if he can't see her. They want the evidence that he has a life outside of these walls. David is less eager than they are.

When he recognizes his visitors, there's only one thing he wants to know: "How did you find me?" It comes out sharper than he had intended. Judy winces, and Sanders probably does too, but David can't see him.

"You're a difficult man to track down, Davey. You aren't in LA anymore."

David snorts. He's not in LA, that much is obvious, and to say so is beyond inane when they are all standing in the Las Vegas Crime Lab reception area.

"Ellison," he starts with no idea how to finish.

"I brought Sandburg this time," Ellison explains.

"Is there a reason you came here?" Came to the Crime Lab, came to Vegas, came to pick up an argument from ten years ago.

"You weren't at your condo," Sandburg says with a shrug. "Your neighbor said you worked graveyard."

David knows that he's being too quiet, that people will generate extravagant rumors about his visitors, that he does not have the energy he had ten years ago to deal with this. Just like he knows Ellison can smell the desperation clinging to David's person much like David can smell the zeal rolling off Sandburg in waves and the tension crashing into him from Sanders.

He closes his eyes in a vain attempt to collect his thoughts. "Give me twenty minutes. Then I'll be on lunch."

The answer appeases both Ellison and Sandburg, but David is apprehensive to turn around and face Sanders.

David frowns and turns around to return to his GCMS. By now the printer should have spit out Sander's results, which means that Sanders will follow him back to the Trace lab. Sanders has a serious expression, and his tension has plateaued into anxiety. He follows David like a lost dog. David is dangerously close to losing himself in the scent of the sweat and soap clinging to Sanders's skin, knowing that same soap stains his own hands, knowing Ellison knows that too.

David finds himself staring at his hands in the doorway of his lab.

"Hodges." Sanders gently pushes him inside the lab.

David stumbles and inhales the freshly printed paper, heat seeping through his fingertips as he scoops it up from the printer. Sanders's presence is now a memory.

"David." It's barely louder than a breath, but the emotion backing it up momentarily jolts David out of his haze. "Are those my results?"

David hands Sanders the piece of paper without even looking at it. His gaze is held somewhere just beyond the printer.

Pain blossoms on David's upper arm. He yelps and looks down to see Sander's pinching him through his lab coat.

"Good. You're back," Sanders says with a nod. David casts empty eyes somewhere in the direction of Sanders's face, and Sanders smiles. "I'm going with you," he says firmly.

David frowns. "No, you're not." Over Sanders's shoulder, Simms gawks at the two of them until Franco swoops down out of nowhere and drags her off.

"Yes, I am. You zoned out. You haven't zoned out in ages." Sanders holds David's gaze until David has to close his eyes to escape Sanders's.

"Fine," David sighs out. "Ellison just wants me to play nice with his anthropologist. He wants to make me a case study. You can attempt to keep me civil in my ways to tell him no."

Sanders smiles like he won the war, and David lets him believe that.

\---

End.


End file.
